Through her new found spirituality in Catholicism Dorothy met Peter Maurin. .
Peter Maurin was a French immigrant who had immigrated from Canada in 1909, and then to the United States in search of his Christian vocation. This vocation allowed him to be free of the Catholic political activism in France. The vagabond lifestyle Maurin had lived had also allowed him to experience a drastic conversion, like Dorothy Day. During his middle-aged years, Maurin had "walked away from the comfort he had struggled to gain in order to pursue a life of poverty, charity, and agitation, which four years later brought him to Dorothy's door" (Griffeth, 2010). Peter was best known for his intellectual scholarly and philosophical ideas probably due to his becoming a brother, in 1932, in which his life involved studying the gospels, the lives of saints, Catholic teaching, and the writings of many philosophers. Peter was the "brains" of the operation when it came to the Catholic Worker movement. Through his self-evaluation during his conversion to Catholicism Maurin's philosophy of life was based off the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, particularly through his Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus declared the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor." He also took to heart the teaching from the gospel of Matthew, "to serve those in need is to serve Christ." For Maurin, poverty was essential to entering into the life of Jesus and embodying the message of salvation Jesus preached, as was nonviolence or the love of enemies" (Griffeth, 2010). Through the numerous works studied by Peter the gospel messages were most prominent and emphasized his ideas of personalism. .
Margarita Mooney, a graduate student in the midst of writing her dissertation, wrote the article What Is Personalism. She expanded upon Kevin Schmeising's article A History of Personalism and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on personalism.
